


I hate everyone (but you)

by smaragdbird



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Cassian is a protective boyfriend, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Kay does not care about organics, M/M, Robot/Human Relationships, anti-droid prejudice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 12:15:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15663048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smaragdbird/pseuds/smaragdbird
Summary: Cassian and Kay, dealing with anti-droid prejudice.





	I hate everyone (but you)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this ](https://rogueonekink.dreamwidth.org/1084.html?thread=442684#cmt442684) prompt

Cassian could hear the yelling from three hallways away and wondered why he had sent Kay to deal with the quartermaster to get the supplies for their mission. Probably because he didn’t like the new quartermaster, Cassian thought idly, and by the sound of it neither did Kay.

“You are being unreasonable even by organic standards”, K-2SO said just when Cassian came around the corner. Quite a few people had gathered to watch the spectacle.

“I am not going to give a droid a weapon!” The quartermaster yelled, his blue face turning purple with anger. “It’s going to kill us all.”

“I told you before it’s not for me. It’s for Captain Andor as part of the preparation for our mission which you can see from the list I gave you.” K-2SO sounded frustrated, probably more so since the quartermaster wasn’t someone he couldn’t just rip apart with his bare hands.

“I’m not giving you the grenades either, droid.” Sometimes Cassian wondered why he didn’t just run away and became an outlaw couple with Kay in the Outer Rim. The governments there were much smaller and probably easier to topple than the Empire.

Giving that fantasy one last thought, Cassian stepped forward and asked, “Is there a problem?”

The Quartermaster’s four eyes swivelled in his directions, narrow and angry. “Do you think it’s funny to send your droid here to pick up weapons?”

“I was thinking it would save me time”, Cassian replied evenly.

“We shouldn’t have let you Seppies into the Rebellion in the first place”, the Quartermaster spat at him.

There were a lot of things Cassian could say, ranging from the logical that he had been six when the Clone Wars ended to going down on the Quartermaster’s level and insulting him on a personal level. Instead Cassian said, “I would like those weapons now. Or else General Draven will hear that you obstructed a vital mission for the Alliance due to personal prejudice.”

The quartermaster sputtered, clearly angered at the implications of Cassian’s words. For a moment Cassian was sure he would still refuse but then his four eyes swilled around and seemed to notice the rather large crowd that had gathered. Cassian was by far not the only one from a CIS world and showing his prejudice this publicly could cost the man his job.

“Weapons don’t belong in the hands of droids, everyone knows that”, he grumbled as he put together everything from the list K-2SO had given him. Anti-droid prejudice was of course a lot more wide-spread. Even Draven referred to K-2SO as Cassian’s ‘pet-droid’ instead by his name or designation.

Cassian pointedly stepped aside and let Kay take the weapons cache. He turned on his heel and left without another word.

“As if I needed a gun to kill him”, K-2SO said, thankfully when they were already out of the quartermaster’s hearing range.

“Please don’t tell him that”, Cassian said, already dreading where this conversation was heading.

“I’d like a gun”, K-2SO mused, “A rifle, preferably. I’m sure I’d be a better shot than you.”

“I’m sure you would be”, Cassian replied because it was the truth but also because he wanted this conversation to end. 

“Did you just agree with me?”

“Don’t get used to it.”

“Can I have a rifle?”

“No, you’d get shot on the first planet we’d set foot on.”

“I could protect you better if I had a gun. And myself, especially myself.”

“Thought that’s why you’re keeping me around.”

“Cassian - “

“Kay, you know why this isn’t a good idea.”

“No one would have to know.”

“And how likely is that?” Cassian asked.

“You never ask me for the probabilities when it’s fun”, Kay complained instead of answering Cassian’s question which was in itself an answer.

“I’m sorry if I don’t find the prospect of my own mortality as amusing as you do.”

/

“I hate this planet already”, K-2SO said when he read the atmospheric readings for Jabiim. “This is a swamp.”

“We’re not staying for long”, Cassian tried to reassure him despite thinking the exact same thing. Jabiim had been ravaged by an experimental weapon from the CIS and now the planet was a swamp with perpetual rain half the cycle and an arid desert for the other half.

“Couldn’t they just have sent a shuttle?”

“We are the shuttle.” If someone had told Cassian ten years ago that he’d be the optimistic one in his partnership he would’ve laughed at them.

“What did you do to anger Draven?”

“Me?” Cassian turned to face him. “What did you do?”

“I haven’t had to run data analysis for Draven in months”, K-2SO replied. “This mission isn’t my fault.”

Cassian knew it was his fault but he wasn’t going to tell K-2SO that because he’d never hear the end of it. Or rather it was Admiral Cracken’s fault who had insisted that Cassian took some of his much overdo leave and Cassian had gone stir crazy within a few days. He wasn’t made for spending much time confined to a room and Yavin was too hot and too humid to spent his free time anywhere else.

“Initiating landing protocol”, Cassian said. “Let’s hope our people are packed and ready to go.”

Of course they got shot at as soon as they landed and left the shuttle or rather K-2SO got shot at.

“Didn’t you say they were our allies?” He asked as they ducked behind a few nearby crates. 

The rain was so heavy that it made it practically impossible to see anything. That it was night time on this half of Jabiim didn’t help either. Cassian tried to wipe the water that was running into his eyes from his face but it was a useless gesture in this kind of weather.

“Who are you?” A woman yelled from the same direction as the shots had come.

“We’re from the Alliance”, Cassian yelled back to her over the sound of the torrenting rain. “We’re here to pick you up.”

A shape emerged from the rain and the darkness, holding a blaster in her hands, aiming not at Cassian but at K-2SO whose frame was partially unobscured behind the crates.

“Why are you protecting that thing?” The woman who had shot Kay, demanded to know. She seemed to be the leader of the group they were dealing with.

“He is - “my friend “valuable”, Cassian yelled back, moving in front of K-2SO so that she couldn’t shoot him again without shooting him first.

“I don’t care how valuable it is, battle droids aren’t allowed on Jabiim.”

“I promise you he’s not a battle droid”, Cassian said, keeping his hands raised to show that he meant her now harm.

“It’s not an astromech either.”

Oh great, Cassian thought, she was one of the clever ones. “He’s a data analyst”, Cassian replied. “I swear on my life that he will do you no harm.”

“Not good enough”, the woman decided. “I can’t ask my people to take a ride with a droid. Do you know what those things did to us?”

“Shooting my droid won’t change that”, Cassian pointed out. “He’ll stay in the pilot compartment with me. Your people won’t have to see him.”

The woman laughed harshly. “Your ideas are getting worse and worse. First we’re meant to tolerate that thing, now we have to trust it with our lives?”

“I am the main pilot”, Cassian replied. He was already regretting begging Draven for this mission. His speciality was shooting people from a great distance, not convincing them that Kay was harmless. “My ship doesn’t have an astromech so K - he does it for me.” Using K-2SO’s nickname would probably rub her the wrong way so he swallowed it at the last second.

“Let me take another look at that thing”, she demanded.

“Only if you take down your blaster and promise me you won’t shoot him”, Cassian said. 

She huffed but did as she was told. In return Cassian gestured for K-2SO to stand up. The woman peered at him. “It looks exactly like a battle droid.”

Despite not having a mouth Cassian could feel that K-2SO was about to tell her how wrong she was, so he quickly kicked him in the leg to shut him up. And for once it even worked.

“You’ve got two options”, Cassian said, “You can trust me or you can stay here and hope that the Alliance will send another ship. Your choice.” She had already shot Kay once, so he was not in a mood to coddle her.

“Fine”, she said eventually. “I’ll get my men.”

/

Somehow K-2SO managed to keep his commentary inside for as long as it took them to get back to Yavin. The Jabiimi Resistance group had not been happy with the situation and their continued hostility had made the hairs on the back of Cassian’s neck stand up the entire flight back.

“She shot me.” K-2SO said as soon as the last of their cargo had left the shuttle.

“I know”, Cassian slipped out of the pilot’s seat and closed the doors and blinds before the turned to Kay.

“She. Shoot. Me.” K-2SO’s tone suggested that he thought Cassian wasn’t taking the situation seriously enough.

Cassian looked at K-2SO’s arm where the blaster bolt had hit him. The surface was charred and molten in but it didn’t seem to be more than superficial. “Did it injure any of your systems?” Cassian asked, knowing that Kay was a better of judge of that than he was.

“No, it’s superficial”, K-2So confirmed Cassian’s initial assessment.

“I can repair it for you when we get back if you want”, Cassian offered.

“I should keep this and show it to everyone as a scar of the time our allies shot me”, he still sounded indignant about it.

“To be fair Jabiim did suffer quite a lot under the droid occupation.”

“I was build seven years after the end of the Clone Wars”, K-2SO protested. “And I look completely different from a CIS battle droid. My programming is much more sophisticated too.”

“Sure, next time we’ll open with that”, Cassian said testily. He felt more shaken by the experience than he would like to admit. Seeing Kay get shot wasn’t something he wanted to get used to and getting shot by their nominal allies, unprovoked…

“Cassian”, K-2SO’s voice roused him from his thoughts. “There was only a 1.3% chance of her hitting anything irreparable at any given moment. Whereas I could’ve killed all of them in 12 seconds if I had had a blaster.”

“Not going to happen, Kay”, Cassian replied, smoothing his thumb over the charred mark on K-2SO’s arm. The soot smeared under his touch and he knew that if they had seriously hurt K-2SO, he would’ve killed them. It was not a comforting thought.

/

“Captain Andor?” Cassian looked up from cleaning his rifle to find a young woman stand in front of him. Going by her insignia she belonged to the tech corps of the Alliance.

“What can I help you with?” Cassian asked. 

“I’m Ensign Jorir, I wanted to talk to you about the modifications made to your Kx droid.”

“Yeah sure”, Cassian could already tell she was new to the Alliance. They always approached him first about these things instead of going directly to Kay, just because Cassian had managed to disable the Imperial obedience protocols on one droid. “Kay is running some data analysis for General Draven, but he should be done before dinner.”

Jorir frowned at Cassian, then sat down next to him, pulled out a holo-pad and launched right into an explanation about code modifications and alterations that went right over Cassian’s head. The longer she continued the more baffled he was by the situation. 

“That’s interesting and all”, he said when she finally took a break, “but shouldn’t you be talking with K-2SO about this? It’s his systems.”

Now it was her turn to look flabbergasted. “But you’re its master. You decide these things.”

“He”, Cassian emphasised the pronoun, “is perfectly capable of making his own decisions. Who told I was Kay’s master?” It was a common misconception for people new to Rebel Intelligence that Kay belonged to him and Cassian found it both annoying and amusing how wrong they were.

“But it’s a droid, it has to have a master.”

“K-2SO is his own master”, Cassian replied. Technically that was both correct and not since K-2SO was officially Alliance property and Cassian was listed as his commanding officer, not as his owner. “You should really talk to him about this.”

“I’m not going to talk to a droid about its modifications. It’s not qualified to make any decisions about that.” There was a note of disdain in her voice.

She was seriously starting to piss him off. “K-2SO knows the most about his own modifications, therefore he’s the most qualified person to talk about them. I haven’t been inside his circuits since I disabled the imperial obedience protocols.”

“Person?” She raised her eyebrows. “You’re one of those crazy droid rights people, aren’t you?”

“Look, if you don’t want to talk to him”, Cassian said, ignoring her comment, “then give the job to someone else. I can’t help you with this.”

/

“You look frustrated.”

“it’s nothing, just the new recruits.”

“It’s never nothing when you say it is nothing.”

Cassian smiled at K-2SO’s comment. But then that smiled vanished again when he thought about the situation earlier. “Do people ever...do I ever treat you like you’re not a person?” He changed his question midway because he knew that other people were dismissive to K-2SO’s face.

There was a long pause before K-2SO said, “I don’t know.”

“What?” Cassian looked up sharply. He hadn’t expected that kind of answer. 

“I have no data on how you’d treat an organic partner and obviously you don’t treat me like a mark or a superior officer, sadly.”

Cassian snorted. “Would you like me to call you sir?”

“Maybe”, K-2SO made a motion that Cassian had come to think of as shrugging even though that was not quite an accurate description of what it looked like. “Super Commando Droids during the Clone Wars were probably called sir.”

“Seems you missed your calling by about ten years”, Cassian joked. He reached over and laced K-2SO’s fingers with his and leaned his head against K-2SO’s shoulder. They sat like that for a long time, Cassian even closing his eyes, trusting Kay to rouse him if anything should happen.

“Other people not treating me like a person, is that why you’re so frustrated?” K-2SO asked when Cassian hadn’t expected him to pick up their conversation again.

“I told you it was just a couple new recruits”, Cassian tried to dissuade his interest in the topic.

“Don’t lie to me, Cassian”, K-2SO admonished him. “You’re not every good at it.”

Seeing that he wasn't going to get out of his conversation, Cassian opened his eyes and sat up straight. “People will always just treat you as a machine, not...not like you should be”, he said, giving a voice to his frustration with this entire situation. Kay was alive, he had thoughts and feelings and opinions, more so than many organics Cassian had met. He didn’t understand why other people couldn’t see that, too.

“That is not something you can protect me from”, K-2SO replied.

“I can try”, Cassian replied stubbornly despite knowing that Kay was right. This was not an enemy he could shoot in the head or a star destroyer he could rig to explode.

“I do not care what organics think of me”, K-2SO continued. “They’re all insignificant, fragile, squishy, stupid meatbags.”

“Shouldn’t there be an ‘except for you, Cassian’ in there?” Cassian asked but he felt the corners of his mouth curl upwards.

“No”, K-2SO replied as he cradled Cassian’s face in his free hand. “You are fragile and squishy and a meatbag and you rarely listen to me, which is quite stupid and on a grand scale of things you’re insignificant.”

“Good thing my ego isn’t fragile”, Cassian muttered.

“But I like you anyway”, K-2SO said and leaned their foreheads together.

“I like you, too”, Cassian replied and folded his own hands in the nape of Kay’s neck to keep him right where he was. There was a word for the feeling that was blooming in his chest but he had always found it a little too nebulous, too broad in its meaning and interpretation. So instead he relished in the feeling of having Kay close and for the moment safely at his side. It was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me [ here](http://smaragdbird.tumblr.com/) on tumblr


End file.
